


A Good Boy

by MarkoftheAsphodel



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu | Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 12:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6006780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarkoftheAsphodel/pseuds/MarkoftheAsphodel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's the peacemaker, the diplomat, the one who never causes any trouble. Delmud of Nordion embraces the role, because it's all he has... until the existence of a younger sister up-ends every assumption that underpins his easy-going life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Good Boy

**Author's Note:**

> This is in the same continuity as "While You Were Sleeping" (hosted on FFNet) and "The Other End of the Telescope" but is meant as a standalone treatment of Tirnanog's odd boy out.

“Ever since he found out, Lester’s just been a ----,” said Ulster, and he used a word that none of them were supposed to even know, much less say.

And he was right; Lester had made a real pain of himself since learning his long-gone father was the rightful king to the far-away land of Verdane. But Ulster being right and Lester being wrong didn’t mean that Delmud could just let things get worse between the two of them.

“I don’t think he’s putting on airs about being a prince. He’s upset about his mother, Ulster. Every time he looks at her now, all he can think about is that she should’ve been a queen, and should’ve been loved by a whole kingdom, and instead all she’s had is a life of care here in Isaach.”

The aggrieved look in Ulster’s dark eyes lessened.

“I guess that makes sense,” he said slowly. “Yeah... I’d be upset about that too...”

And for all that mothers were a touchy subject in Tirnanog, Ulster took that explanation to heart.

“I wouldn’t have seen it that way,” he said to Delmud. “You really do cut right to the bone, Del.”

Delmud smiled at his friend. He’d come up with the explanation for Lester’s behavior in the moment before saying it aloud, but it felt right, and it worked to pacify Ulster, and so maybe it didn’t matter whether he’d thought it over long and hard or pieced it together in a flash. 

Besides, he was good at that kind of thing. A couple of months later, when the holy brand of Saint Odo appeared on Ulster’s back and Lester had his nose put out of joint, Delmud had to spin an equally ingenious explanation for why Ulster was suddenly blessed. It worked then, too. He really did have a gift for it. 

-x-

Delmud didn’t exactly come by it naturally. Maybe he did, in the sense that he didn’t indulge in pranks and teasing like Lester, and didn’t get _upset_ over so many things like Ulster. But the whole idea of being the balancer, the peacemaker, the one who kept Tirnanog from falling all to pieces... that wasn’t any accident. Once when he was very small-- five or six, he reckoned it-- he’d overheard Mother Aideen talking to some noble lady of Isaach who’d come to stay at the convent with them. Mother Aideen told the other lady about all of them, from Lord Seliph right down to little Lana, and provided quite a clear-eyed assessment of all their strengths and failings. But when she got to Delmud, Mother Aideen had paused and said only, “He’s never caused me any grief.”

He’d remembered that. It stuck with him in the way that some moments from childhood stayed fixed forever when so much else blended together and faded. He might never be the tallest or the strongest (though he turned out to be quite tall and strong), or the most clever (though he wasn’t any dullard), but Delmud could be, and would be, the one to never give poor Mother Aideen an ounce of grief. It was the least he could do, given that he’d been foisted on her in a way the others hadn’t. And if he could keep the rest of their little gang from giving Mother Aideen any more trouble... well, he was, in a sense, earning his keep.

-x-

He remembered the moment where Mother Aideen had defined him, but Delmud couldn’t quite place the moment when he realized he didn’t belong to Tirnanog the way everyone else did. Lester and Lana were there with their mother, of course, and even if she came from someplace else, that meant they belonged at Tirnanog. Ulster and his twin Larcei belonged their by their very nature; even before the brand of Saint Odo showed up on each of them, everyone knew they were Prince and Princess of Isaach, the last hope of the kingdom if anything ever happened to Prince Shanan. And Seliph belonged there because he’d been entrusted to Prince Shanan by his mother Lady Deirdre, and wherever Shanan went, Seliph went. 

Delmud was there because he’d been left with Mother Aideen for a little while that turned into forever. He didn’t belong to Tirnanog or anywhere else in Isaach. He didn’t belong to anyone, either. As the years went by, and his real mother, the one in rose-shaped ivory picture frame, never came for him, Delmud carried with him that sense that he, of anyone in Tirnanog, shouldn’t be the one to cause trouble. He had to be good, because he wasn’t supposed to be there. He’d been dropped off with a broadsword crafted from silver, the ivory picture frame, and the promise that one day, his mother would come back.

“She went to find your cousin, Prince Ares,” was the explanation he’d been given for as far back as he could remember. This mysterious cousin was the son of the man in the other half of the picture frame. His mother’s elder brother had been a king, or should’ve been a king, except that he was dead, which meant that Prince Ares very important. More important than Delmud, clearly--in the same way that Lord Seliph turned out to be more important than the rest of them, so Delmud didn’t hold it against Ares. He saw what that was like, as one by one everyone in Tirnanog learned his destiny.

Seliph learned that his mother Lady Deirdre was really _Empress Deirdre_ , which changed things between them all even if Seliph said that it shouldn’t. Then Lester found out about his father being the rightful king of Verdane. Then Ulster and Larcei got the brand. Delmud waited, but nothing happened to him. Mother Aideen had no revelations for him, and no strange markings ever appeared on his skin, and his real mother never came back. So he continued to be good-- really, it was all that he had.

-x-

Once Sir Oifaye started training him, Delmud realized that maybe he did have something going for him. It made sense, he realized after a short time, that Oifaye started looking out for him, because Oifaye didn’t quite belong in Tirnanog either. He was there because Seliph’s father Lord Sigurd had asked him to be, and he was taking care of Seliph along with Prince Shanan and Mother Aideen, but that was a lot of people to take care of one boy and Seliph was turning out a lot like Shanan. He dressed like a boy from Isaach, wore his hair like boys from Isaach, and he used the sword the way Shanan taught him. 

“I’m not a master of swordplay like Shanan is, but there are a few things I can teach you,” said Sir Oifaye, and what he then taught Delmud was something completely different from the whirling dances of Isaachian swordmasters. Delmud already knew how to ride— come to think of it, he’d picked that up before any of the others— and now he learned how to handle a practice sword that was heavy and broad. It wasn’t elegant. Delmud felt like a butcher when he hacked and slashed at the practice dummy, but watching Oifaye he learned that this school of fighting could be graceful in its own way. Powerful, too.

He was not going to be like the others, but Delmud already knew that, and in time he started to love being Sir Oifaye’s student. If there was a spot of trouble, Delmud realized he could gallop in, take care of it, and dash away before Ulster and Larcei even got there, and that made him something better than good. Now, he was _helpful_. 

One day, Sir Oifaye told Delmud he could take that shining silver blade down from its place on the wall. He was old enough now to take ownership of it Oifaye said, to use the weapon that was truly his rather than practice sword.

“Not anyone can use a weapon like this one, Delmud.”

And because Delmud was good at catching subtle things he looked up from reflection in the blade and asked the question he’d wanted to ask for long months, maybe years, but never had because it possibly wasn’t a good question to ask.

“Oifaye... if something happened to my mother and my cousin, would I be the last one in the line of Crusader Hezul?”

Oifaye touched his mustache the way he usually did before saying something he didn’t much want to say, but he answered.

“As far as we know, yes.”

“Then would I be the king of Agustria?”

“That fate would fall to you,” Oifaye said, and he made it sound a heavy fate indeed.

“So would I have the brand of Hezul then?” It was the question he really wanted answered, the one thing it seemed no one could or would answer.

“It’s possible,” was all Oifaye said in the end.

Sometimes he’d slipped up and said “my parents” when speaking of the handsome golden couple in the ivory picture frame. Each of the adults around him, Oifaye and Shanan and Mother Aideen, had made the same mistake exactly once in Delmud’s hearing— and then quickly corrected themselves. No one ever explained anything more to Delmud. As far as anyone knew, he wasn’t the rightful king of Agustria, and he didn’t have the brand, and so he still didn’t have anything to go on, really, besides being good old dependable Delmud. People liked him for it; whenever Larcei and Lana quarreled with their brothers, they’d come to him saying that they wished he was their brother instead of rotten Lester or scaredy-cat Ulster, because he was so _nice_. 

-x-

Delmud and Lester began to accompany Oifaye on expeditions around Isaach, looking for allies, supplies, information, anything that would help the cause of Prince Shanan and Lord Seliph. They returned from one of these routine missions to find that, in their absence, Lord Seliph had kicked off a revolution against the Empire and after that a great many things happened in a short amount of time. A strange man who denied being the former king of Silesse came and went and left a beautiful girl with pale hair and an aura of sadness in their midst. A pegasus rider who was actually the princess of Silesse showed up with a mage who turned out to be a noble from Grannvale, which meant they were both Crusader descendants. Larcei convinced one of the sons of usurper King Danan to turn against his father and brothers. Suddenly, improbably, Isaach was freed… and Prince Shanan was not even there to share in the celebration as he’d gone down to Yied in search of his family’s holy sword.

Delmud and his silver blade did well, so he could be proud of himself, but none of the excitement was truly _his_. He’d helped Seliph and the twins and Shanan in their fight, and that was good. Yet, when Lewyn the not-king of Silesse came back to them with stories of trouble across the sea in Leonster, it all became quite personal to Delmud in ways he’d never imagined.

They were all looking over maps in their new headquarters at the palace of Isaach, and Delmud was mostly following Sir Oifaye’s lead on how their battle plan ought to work because Oifaye’d taught him everything he did know about tactics and strategy. But Lewyn had something different in mind, and as the former king explained why it mattered so much that they get resources to Leonster as soon as possible even if it meant swinging down through the desert and cutting across Northern Thracia in an improbable detour, Lewyn looked directly at Delmud. 

“Your sister’s down there fighting with Prince Leif, Delmud.”

“My sister?”

“Yeah, your little sister. Nanna. Oh, that’s right, you wouldn’t have known.” Lewyn sounded almost cheerful but not especially kind, which was as nice as he ever was to any of them. “Well, it’ll be great to see her, won’t it?”

And Lewyn went on to talk of other things, leaving Delmud as lost for words as ever he’d been in his life. 

_My sister. I have a sister. Then Mother…_

_But how?_

**Author's Note:**

> Elsewhere I've used "Dermott" for Delmud's name in keeping with the new Project Naga translation but using Dermott means losing the endearing nickname "Del" borrowed from Japanese fans and uh, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.


End file.
